Sometimes, nostalgia turns out to be a very good thing. A long time ago, The Adventures of Pete & Pete was a totally awesome show. And after watching it again just this afternoon, it turns out it's still totally awesome and a lot deeper in the musically awesome department than we realized at age eight (and we're not just talking the theme music). When discussing the music of Pete & Pete , it all starts with Polaris. The wonderfully '90s theme song "Hey Sandy" was penned by Mark Mulcahy, originally the frontman for Miracle Legion [...]

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Smile! No one cares how you feel - The Gothic Archies The biggest laugh in the theatre for the Strange Powers movie was from a clip for an American morning show with Stephin Merritt as the Gothic Archies as musical guest. It's another great moment of someone not meant for television finding themselves on television. The interviewer is as up and bubbly as morning television mandates, Stephin as he is. There was an exchange that could have only happened between two people of such [...]

I really should have mentioned this before, but if there are any bands out there who want to play Glastonbury, they have until the 5pm on Monday 17th to apply through the Emerging Talent Competition, which can be entered here . I've had a lot of emails this week since my name went on that list. They've all been really nice emails, not an arse amongst them, but the music has been a very long way indeed from the kind of stuff I listen to, so I do find myself wondering a little at my suitability for [...]

Ordinarily we probably wouldn't care to tell you about musical theater news, but this isn't just musical theater. It's Stephin Merritt does musical theater - yes, that Stephin Merritt, of The Magnetic Fields , The Gothic Archies , The Three Terrors and now, Coraline: The Musical , opening tonight off Broadway. Merritt said Coraline is not for the faint of heart. "When I am dictator," he told The Village Voice , "compulsive homosexuality will remove the problem of children. Soon, I will be dictator. Until [...]

Magnetic Fields skiva 69 Love Songs är troligen den bästa trippelskiva som någonsin släppts och innehåller massor av odödliga låtar som t.ex. The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side och When My Boy Walks Down the Street . Sångaren Stephin Merrit har ett mindre känt sidoprojekt: The Gothic Archies . Där Magnetic Fields var ironiska så är The Gothic Archies seriöst deprimerade och gravallvarliga. För dom som liksom jag gärna frossar i deppig pop och till och med kan bli lite glad när det inte finns spår av ironi utan allt är [...]
1. A Series of Unfortunate Events. Öll serían, 13 bækur, þar af eru 3 sett af þremur bókum í sérlega fallegum slip-case umbúðum. Óhætt er að segja að þessar mögnuðu sögur Lemony Snicket hafi slegið rækilega í gegn, og ekki alls fyrir löngu var gerð bíómynd eftir fyrstu þremur bókunum með Jim Carrey í hlutverki vonda gaursins. Þessar útgáfur eru allar á ensku, og vel með farnar. Raunvirði út úr búð myndi ég skjóta á að væri á bilinu 15-20.000 kr. Allur pakkinn fæst hér á 10.000 kr. 2. Heildarútgáfa John [...]

To celebrate the oncoming sugar coma here's a collection of 13 spooktastic tracks. Enjoy! Download: Dream Syndicate - Halloween John Cale - Fear Is A Man's Best Friend Gun Club - Ghost on the Highway The Beat Happening - Pajama Party in a Haunted Hive Radiohead - We Suck Young Blood [...]

by Randall Monty Is there anyone else who remembers the Dinobots? They were characters from the Transformers series that could turn into dinosaurs rather than automobiles. For a childhood me, this was much more than a toy line, it was a spectacular turn of events that I could only describe as serendipitous. Simply put: Two of my favorite worlds had collided. When the Dinobots burst onto the scene, it seemed as though the entire universe were aligning for my personal benefit. How did anyone know? The whole was even greater than the sum of its [...]
Enjoy Stephin Merritt's deadpan performance on Good Morning Atlanta to promote The Tragic Treasury: Songs from A Series of Unfortunate Events. Listen to Smile! No One Cares How You Feel (live) Listen to Shipwrecked You can hear more of the Gothic Archies' performance at Massachusetts' Natick High School at Bradley's Almanac. Buy The Tragic [...]
Okay! Finally, somebody did a best-of that I could emulate . Best songs is just so much easier than best albums; the tricky question of whether to assess the album as an artistic whole, or based on the quality of the individual songs therein, doesn't arise. At first this makes the task seem more manageable than a best albums list, which it isn't, since technically the possible entries have just been multiplied by--how many tracks do albums have these days?--somewhere between one and fifty-six . In no particular order, [...]

It is plainly obvious that Mr. Lemony Snicket simply does not like children. The proof is not only in the terrible trials he puts the Baudelaire children through in his now-finished, 13-part " A Series of Unfortunate Events " books, but in the fact that he left hundreds of them in the lurch last month at the high school in Natick, Massachusetts. Mr. Snicket was scheduled to appear on-stage alongside Mr. Daniel Handler and Mr. Stephin Merritt (aka The Gothic Archies ) to not only read selections from his writings, but to make the musical [...]
While I only have about 10 hours to decide on a Halloween costume, that doesn't mean I can't have a sweet soundtrack while I do it. Here are some of the finest tunes of the season! Your Costume The most important part of Halloween. Here they range from Ted "I'm a Ghost" ...

Lucky me, I got to go see Stephin Merritt and Daniel Handler play songs from The Tragic Treasury and read from--I don't know which book it was, possibly A Bad Beginning ? (So unfortunate that Mr. Snicket himself couldn't make it, but he seems to have briefed Mr. Handler most thoroughly--and clearly, their shared habit of formality is catching!) It may scandalize but it can hardly surprise my audience that I have never actually read any of his books, and I went entirely to hear Stephin Merritt. I can't imagine two more suited [...]
It seems like the perfect set up. Daniel Handler(or Lemony Snicket) commissions Stephin Merritt to help write music to accompany his best selling book series, A Series Of Unfortunate Events. Since Mr. Merritt loves to work within conceptual bounds you would expect this to come off without a hitch, and in a way it does. If this was a book report, he would recieve an A+ for staying true to the source material. However, this album is plagued by the same issues that all of Stephin's projects outside of the Magnetic Fields are. While the idea that the Gothic Archies [...]
I love this junk shop glam rock discotheque... We will really miss our regular gig at the Chain Drive -- including our ability to play everything from Herb Alpert to The Stranglers to Luxxury to Marlene Dietrich and whatever else strikes our fancy. Strike this item off that list of things to do before we die: We had a dj residency at a leather bar. And I think they loved us -- we sure loved them. Thanks, guys! Here's the setlists, complete with links to songs we may have written about/posted in the past. Because we're nice like that. [...]
1 Doctor Blind - Emily Haines - Emily Haines of Metric and Broken Social Scenes steps out with her solo album, Knives Don't Have Your Back. Emily's site Emily's myspace 2 Boogie No More - Richard Dorfmeister vs. Madrid de Los Austria Grand Slam is the new album from DJ's extraordinaire Richard Dorfmeister vs. Madrid de los Austrias. [...]